It was pouring. Hard.

Alek ran through the now empty streets of the little town as he hurried home. He grumbled under his breathe to relieve his annoyance. The newscast this morning had predicted a cloudless day. If he had known it was going to rain, he would have brought an umbrella. If he had brought an umbrella, then he could have stayed out a little longer and finished his drawing. Oh well, guess that drawing had to wait a little while longer.

When Alek neared a bus stop station he quickly sprinted underneath it, glad to get out of the rain. Alek hung his head and squirmed around to try to get warm. He ran a numb hand through his hair, shaking off unwanted droplets of water.

Only when he had made sure that his jacket was zipped up snug did he look up. This was when he noticed that he wasn’t alone.

A few feet away from him, sitting on the edge of the bench, sat a girl. Despite the raging storm around her, she looked quite content with a book on her lap, a scarf pulled tight around her neck, and an umbrella propped up to keep away any rain drops that had managed to escape the overhead of the bus station.

She didn’t seem to notice him, looking completely immersed in the book she was reading. The girl looked like she was about his age, seventeen. She didn’t look familiar to him and he wondered if she was new in town.

Alek wasn’t sure if he should say anything. He didn’t want to interrupt her from reading. After a silent debate in his head, he decided to remain quiet and instead studied his surroundings. It looked like besides himself and the girl on the bench, the streets were mostly deserted. Most likely, everybody had run inside to avoid the onslaught of the heavy downpour.

Alek peered up at the sky, wondering when the rain was going to let down. If he wasn’t home soon, his mom was going to start worrying about him.

Out of nowhere, a light whispery voice interrupted his thoughts, “It doesn’t look as if the rain will stop anytime soon.”

Alek glanced sideways at the sound of her voice. She sat in the same position as before, unmoving except for the occasional flip of the page. The girl showed no sign of uttering even a single word.

Alek was about to dismiss it as something from his imagination, when she suddenly spoke again.

“You should just make a run for it. Don’t waste your time waiting. You can even use my umbrella if you want.”

For a moment, Alek was caught off guard. His mouth flailed a bit before he could form whole words. And it was a minute before he could make sentences with them.

“E-E-Excuse me?”

“I said,” she started. “If you’re waiting for the rain to stop, don’t. The rain is not going to stop anytime soon,” the girl said without looking up from her book.

“So, what are you still doing here?”

She pointed to her book without taking her eyes off the pages. “What does it look like I’m doing?” she replied.

Alek remained silent after that, not knowing how to reply.

After a few beats, the girl suddenly closed her book and gave her full attention to Alek. When she turned to face him, he was finally able to fully analyze her.

The first thing he noticed, was the spray of freckles splattered across her nose bridge. From there, he took in the curly hair that hung shoulder length, perfectly framing her petite face. Her eyes were bright as she studied him studying her.

Her eyes seemed to peer into his soul, and she made no move to shift her gaze. Starting to feel uncomfortable, Alek shuffled his body nervously. His gaze wandered around, searching for something to look at to distract him from the girl in front of him.

That was when his eyes landed on the closed book laying on the bench where the girl had set it down before.

“What were you reading?” Alek asked, gesturing at the book. He felt proud of himself that he had found a reason to draw her eyes away from him.

When she finally did peel her eyes away, she turned slightly to glance at the book she left behind. “It’s a collection of paintings completed by Helen Frankenthaler.”

“You’re into art?” Alek was barely able to hide his surprise. He would never have deemed the strange girl in standing in front of him an artist. “Are you an artist?”

“Actually, I never understood art. Never appreciated it. But my mom did. Art was her life. When she died, I figured I owed it to her to at least try to see what she saw. To see what it was like to see the world through her eyes,” she paused, turning back to look at Alek. “I think… I think I’m finally starting to get it.”

Now Alek was curious. He had heard of this Helen Frankenthaler once or twice before, but he’d never actually taken a look at her work.

“May I?” Without really waiting for an answer, Alek walked the short distance to the bench and reached down to pick up the book. Sure enough, a portrait of a beaming woman smiled up at him, probably Helen Frankenthaler.

He opened the book to the first page. After a quick glance, he scanned the rest of the pages with half interest.

“How is this good? How is this even considered art?”

The girl looked like she couldn’t decide whether she should feel offended or shocked as she snatched the book from Alek. He made a small sound of protest at not being able to take a look at the remaining pages of the book.

“What do you mean? How would you know anything about art?”

As they moved on to a topic of conversation that he was very familiar with, Alek felt more comfortable voicing his opinion. For Alek was an artist, and he was often complimented for his artistic prowess that lay in his black pen and notebook filled with sketches and doodles.

“They’re just blobs and lines on the paper. How do you call that art? And just so you know, I’m an artist myself. I know this type of stuff. I know what real art looks like, and let me tell you. It’s definitely not that,” Alek replied haughtily.

Throughout his little rant, the girl was thinking back to how nice it was when he had first ran under the bus station and didn’t talk. She got a challenging gleam in her eye, deciding to see just how much he did know about art.

“So what makes art real?” She asked him defiantly.

“Art conveys something. A picture, a memory. Anything. Those paintings are just blobs. That doesn’t qualify as art,” Alek said confidently.

“But they do convey things. They convey feelings. Art in general makes you feel. It doesn’t just show you a picture. Frankenthaler expresses emotion through color. Each color ignites a different feeling. Put together, you feel emotions. From there you can see whatever image you want to see. That’s the beauty of Frankenthaler’s art.”

“That’s stupid,” Alek spit out.

His words cut her down from her fervor. She glared at him through strands of chocolate brown hair that were flying out in front of her face.

“What?” he asked innocently.

“Stupid how?” she grinded out, starting to get really annoyed at the stranger in front of her.

“Well, it’s just that everybody knows that artists only use colors as a substitute for talent,” Alek said nonchalantly.

“That’s not true!” she said indignantly. The girl hurriedly reopened the book and flipped through the contents of the book, finally stopping at a page near the end of the book.

She turned the book around to face Alek so that he could see what was on the page. “What does that look like to you?” she asked.

“A bunch of bubbly shapes, which I suppose are clouds,” Alek replied with a shrug. “You see what I mean, there is nothing that stands out on the page-“

The girl cut him off, ignoring both him and the annoyed face he had made at her. “Well when I look at this painting, I see a dark billowing puff of smoke made of deep blues and washed out greys. It looks as if it’s spreading, moving on the paper. It’s frustration, anger, a deeper darkness brewing. Not everybody notices at first. But when it grows bigger and bigger, it starts to fill the edges of the painting and, pretty soon, nobody can look away. None of this would be possible without color. Color brings feelings, it brings emotions that sometimes can’t be shown through just shape and lines.”

Alek was taken aback. He didn’t know whether it was the pure awe he heard in between the syllables of her words or the fact that she was basically telling him there was a whole other side of art he had never been aware of. Alek had always considered himself a decent artist, evening winning some local competitions. He couldn’t possible have been wrong about art this whole time.

But even if Alek was surprised at her explanation, he didn’t show it. Instead he rolled his eyes in exasperation, “I can’t even see color, so what’s the point?”

“You… can’t see color?” The girl’s facial expression lost all of its accusations and pointedness, turning blank. 

“I’m color blind.”

When Alek was born, he didn’t have the ability to see color. From the very start, Alek’s world has always been one of black and white.

Whenever people found about this, there was always pity and concern. Who wouldn’t? How gloomy would it be to not see color your whole life? Maybe it would’ve been a little better if Alek had only been partially color blind. But no, he was born with one of the rarest forms of color blindness, the complete kind.

But if you asked Alek himself what he thought about his colorblindness, he would’ve shrugged and moved on with life as per usual. To Alek, not seeing color was no big deal. As he thinks of it, how can you miss something you’ve never even had?

A few moments of silence went by before the girl formulated a response. “Well, that explains it,” she said under her breathe, almost to herself.

Satisfied, she backed up and walked back over to the bench and picked up her umbrella, which, up until now, had only been a spectator of their argument.

Alek, a bit surprised at her sudden actions, blurted out the first thing that came to his mind, “Wait… you’re leaving?”

For a moment, he almost felt a pang of sadness blossom in chest. But it went away so fast he wondered if it was ever there.

The girl bit back a smile, turning to face Alek again. “Yeah.”

“But what about our conversation?” Alek didn’t know why he asked. Maybe he had wanted to see where the conversation would bring him. Or maybe he was still mystified by the girl standing in front of him. He wanted to figure her out.

“How do you explain color to a colorblind person? There’s no way.”

“Try me,” Alek shot back, a little offended.

“Color isn’t something that can be explained. It’s something that is seen, felt, something that you keep inside of you so that in moments of dullness, you can take it out and have a way to let out your emotions. Color is everywhere. Just try looking a little bit harder.”

She turned to walk away, then paused. Turning around yet again, she held out her umbrella to him.

“Take this, it’s still raining.”

Alek made no move to take it. “What about you? You’ll get sick.”

She just smiled at him, “I don’t mind. Besides, my mom had always told me that colors are best seen after the rain. That way, all the debris from a long day can be washed away first,” she beamed. “I don’t want to miss it.”

She was gone before he could say anything. She left him confused and irritated. Everything she had said made no sense to him.

How could he try to see color? In the span of the entire seventeen years of his life, he had never seen color. There was no way he could start seeing color now. What was she thinking?

Alek shook his head and let out a breath. He looked around him. Now he was completely alone. 

Deciding not to linger any longer, he opened the umbrella and started the trek home yet again.

When he got home, he went straight to his bed and flopped down. The girl’s words were still swimming in his head. He could not make any sense of them.

After a while he turned and reached over to grab the remote control sitting on his nightstand, deciding to use television to distract him from the turmoil in his head.

“-the Frankenthaler family has also retuned back home to mourn the recent passing of our beloved Helen Frankenthaler.”

The news report caught his attention, and his eyes widened as a picture of a family sprang up on the television screen. He recognized the famous painter that he had first seen on the girl’s book. Standing just off to the right, was her. The girl he was just talking to earlier that day.

Stumped yet again, he fell back on his bed and rubbed his eyes.

After a while he got up and walked over to the only window in his room, taking note of the weather. The clouds seemed to have disappeared and the sky had finally stopped raining.

Alek was just about to retreat back into the depths of his room, when something caught his eyes.

The umbrella that the girl had handed to him was still lying next to his front door where he had left it before entering the house.

As he stared at the umbrella, he saw something he had never seen before. It was bright, very bright. In fact it almost blinded his eyes, but he could not look away.

The umbrella was not black nor white, nor any grey that he had ever seen.

It was loud, calling to him. It looked angry, powerful. His heart beat faster, and his mind drifted back to what the girl had said to him before.

“How do you explain color to a colorblind person?”